animated candle tutorial

Animated Candle

I made this tutorial specially for PSP Anonymous. A great PSP group. You are welcome to check us out. Just click here:

This tutorial is written for PSP7, but will work for PSP6. Its a bit long, so it will take some time to load! Just take it one step at a time, and it wont be to complicated!

In this tutorial you will (learn to work) with some more layers in PSP and you will learn to make a simple animation in animationshop.
First you will need to download the candle, the candlestick and the flames tube.
They are all together in one zip file. To download click HERE.
Unzip the file. Open PSP and open all three files. We'll do the candlestick first. Go to File/export/as picture tube. Set the pictures vertically and horizontaly to 1 both. The amount resulting should be 1 too! Name the tube and OK it! Do the same for the candle and next for the flames tube, but Set the horizontal number at five. Close the candle and the candlestick files but leave the flame file open. We are going to use that one in a different way.
You will also need a nice christmassy background. I used the Holly tile you see as a border here. You can save it by right mouse click if you want it. Open it too in PSP.

Now open a new file with the following options:

Width: 200 pixels
height: 300 pixels
Backgroundcolor: Transparent
Image Type: 16,7 million colours

Open the tooloptions window and the layer palette window by clicking . You see that you have only one layer. Click on the name "layer1" and rename it "candle".
First we are going to assemble the Candlestick. Grab the picture tube tool
and choose the candle from your tubes collection in the tool options window. Set scale at 50. Click in your picture window to place the tube.
Now go to the layers menu and add a new raster layer. Call it "candlestick". You can see in the layer palette that this layer is "highlighted". That means that this is the active layer. Take the tube tool again and now choose the candlestick tube. Scale it at 75 and place the candlestick on the new layer.
By using the mover tool and clicking on the candle stick you can move it to a position in the middle near the bottom of your picture. To put the candle in the candlestick you click on it and move it to the right spot. Your picture wil now look something like this:

We are now going to add some background.
Add a new raster layer and name it "light". This will be the ACTIVE layer now. Choose the flood fill tool, , set transparency at 100 and all other options on normal
Choose a very light yellow as foreground color in the color palette, and a dark purple as backgroundcolor.
With a left mouse click you floodfill the picture with the soft yellow. It will look as if your candle stick has disappeared, but dont worry: Since this layer is the top layer, it is the only one visible. By clicking on the "glasses" next to its name in the layer palette window you can turn its visibility on and off.
Turn the visiblity on. Click on the layer named "light" and hold the mouse button down wile you move the layer two places down so its behind the candle and the candlestick layers. This is what your picture will look like now

Make the layer called light the active one. Now go to the layers menu and add a new raster layer. Name it shade and floodfill it with the dark purple (same settings as above). You see the new layer will always be places on top of the active layer.

By now you must have selected the christmassy background you want to use. It must be open. Make the SHADE layere temporary invisible by clicking the "glasses" next to the name.
In the color menu your syles options now look like this:

By clicking in the black triangle you will get this choice: Click on the nine dotted image Now the purple rectangle a window will have a picture inside. By double clicking it in the tooloptions window open you can now choose the pattern of your choice:

By OK-ing your choice the pattern will appear in the stiles options:

Add a new raster layer on top of the layer called "light". Call it pattern. Floodfill it using your right-mouse click with the pattern of your choice.

Make the shade layer visible again and shift the layer opacity switch to about 25. There is a dark shade now over your pattern:

Now we are going to do the light of the candle. We are going to work with the eraser tool: Set the shape on round, size on 200, hardness 0 and opacity and density 100. Make the pattern layer ACTIVE. Put your cursor just over the top of your candlewick and click once.
Now make the shade layer active and do the same. You will have a nice Light spot behind your candlewick:

Resize the eraser to 100 and set hardness to 15 and click once more on the shade layer where later the candle flame should be. Bring back the opacity of the Pattern layer to 75%.
Make the candlestick layer ACTIVE. Behind the layer opacity switch you see the word NORMAL. Click on it and a whole menu with BLEND MODES will appear. Look what happens to your candlestick when you use the diffrent BLEND MODES. I Settled for the one called LUMINANCE resulting in this:

Before we are going to add the flame and animate it we are going to merge all these layers. Go to the layer menu and choose MERGE/All Visible.
In the layer palette there will be only one layer left called MERGED.

To make it into a real card we'll buttonnise the picture we have now. First add a new raster layer as a top layer. Go to the EFFECTS menu, choose 3D EFFECTS and BUTTONNIZE. Take the following settings:

If you want to add text too your card, now is the time!
And now for the flames:

Grab the LASSO tool and set the options to FREEHAND. Cut out the first flame in the flames picture and copy it with CONTROL C. Click on your candle picture and press CONTROL L. This will create a new layer with the flame in it. Name the layer Flame1. PLace the flame on top of the candle. Take care the candle wicks overlap a bit.

This way you will create four more layers with the other flames from the flame picture. Take care to place the candle wicks of the flames exactly on top of each other. otherwise you will end up with an animation with a wandering flame. Call these layers flame2, flame3, flame4 and flame5.
Now you will have to make 4 duplicates of your work. So you have 5 images in total. You do this by clicking SHIFT D 4 times.

On the first image you delete the layers called Flame2, Flame3, Flame4 and Flame5. Merge the layers and save this image as candle1.psp. In the second image you delete all flames exept Flame2. Merge and save as candle2.psp. Do likewise for all images.

Open Animation shop and go to menu File/Animation Wizzard.

On the first screen your check "same size......
On the 2nd screen your check "transparent"
On the 3rd screen your check "upper left" and with "canvas color"
On the 4th screen your check "yes repeat" and you fill in 12 at the frame display.
On screen 5 you click "add image" and you browse to the directory where you stored the files candle1.psp, candle2.psp, candle3.psp, candle4.psp and candle5.psp. Select all five files and click open. Now you will see the five files listed.
On the last screen you click finish.

The animation will, after its processed, apear as Animation-1-Frames, with five frames in a row. In order to view it in action click on animation in the VIEW menu. And Animation-1-view will apear. You will actually see the flame flicker.

Go to FILE and save your animation!

Enjoy
Edda

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